


Growing in the Autumn Garden

by mage_989



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, McSpirk - Freeform, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mage_989/pseuds/mage_989
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the keeper of Spock's katra draws McCoy into Kirk and Spock's existing relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing in the Autumn Garden

It’s Spock’s mind Jim knows it is. His words are his, his voice is his. He presses against Jim’s body to give him pleasure in the way that only their years of experience together have granted them. The hands though are not his. They are McCoy’s stock and trade, calloused from years of use. They don’t tremble with sensations of a touch telepath. They don’t reach for the familiar meld points on his face. The lips are just a bit drier; his tongue has a different taste. The hair that Jim runs his fingers through is slightly thicker and longer.

When the task was complete Spock would normally hold Jim silently, but tightly, until they both fell asleep. McCoy it turns out likes pillow talk. He tells Jim that he always thought he had beautiful eyes. Jim gives an awkward answer that he does too, while wondering if they had always been so blue. McCoy tells Jim he’s sorry he couldn’t save Spock. He asks him if this makes Jim feel better. Jim answers that it does.

It would be almost four months before Jim would finally admit to himself that it was about more than just being able to ‘be’ with Spock one more time that caused those feelings.

***

The trip to the Genesis planet leaves McCoy with a lot of time to think. To reflect on the fact that he has literally seen Spock’s soul. It is terrifying and yet…wonderful. It could probably be considered an insulting thing to say after so many years working together, but McCoy feels like he finally knows Spock. That he really gets him at a fundamental level in a way he never had before. He likes what he sees there and tries not to dwell too much on how all that still makes him feel. Down that path madness lies.

As the Bird of Prey makes its way to Vulcan he takes care of Spock like Jim asked him to, tending to small cuts, and wiping dirt and dust from his robe. Then McCoy looks down at Spock and begs him to tell him how to fix this. As Spock just continues to lie there McCoy starts to feel like he’s in one of those old fairy tale movies he used to watch with Joanna. The idea is stupid. Still, McCoy can’t help but think about what Jim had all ready done: disobeying his superiors, going up against unbeatable odds, saving his lost love at any price. It already was a fairy tale. So throwing caution to the wind McCoy leans down and gently kisses Spock on the lips.

***

McCoy watches them carefully for the next few months and it’s all he can do not to scream at the pair of them. Spock so stiff and formal, Jim looking like a kicked puppy every time Spock used the word admiral. It can’t go on like this. He has to do something because…because he’s a doctor damn it! Fixing things is what he does. It took them long enough to find each other the first time, and he is not letting the best thing that ever happened to those two men fall apart on his watch.

So, he sets about trying to get Spock to see how it’s supposed to be. He doesn’t ask himself why he's making such moves when Jim isn’t even looking to get jealous. He deliberately ignores how fun it is to lean over into Spock’s personal space. Or, how, when every crew member, save Jim and Sulu, are crammed together in a small diner booth in 1980’s San Francisco for a quick dinner. Before going back to work on the tank, and the engines; and McCoy brushes up against Spock and he doesn’t pull away McCoy still can’t bring himself to actually mind.

***

It’s all over. The Earth is saved, the whales are safe…and Spock remembers. That’s a good thing McCoy tells himself as he swims for shore. Jim is happy and Spock is who he should be, and with the one he should be with. That was what he had wanted to accomplish after all; but seeing them holding each other tightly and kissing as they bob in the water McCoy felt an overwhelming need to cry.

***

He falls ill after that. Men his age weren’t supposed to be running around in strange cities and throwing themselves into freezing cold water after all. It’s just a cold with a nasty cough to accompany it though. So, not being sick enough to need to stay in sickbay, but knowing better than to spread it around the ship he resigned himself to the isolation of his quarters to wait it out.

He had just gotten his grumpy self straightened out in bed when Jim and Spock came in with three different books, a deck of playing cards, and a food tray filled with juice, soup, and large piece of red velvet cake.

They stayed with him for the day, helping him to take his mind off of how rotten he felt. But McCoy didn’t expect them to stay the night, and he certainly did not expect them to stay in his bed. Jim has his arm draped over him and Spock is pressed too firmly against his back, and he knows that something big is happening.

When he is well again they agree to take shore leave together, and it went as well as it usually did. Jim did something stupid, Spock saved his ass at the last second, and McCoy did a lot of yelling.

That night McCoy dreams of something beyond some great barrier, that something that drags him down until Jim and Spock arrive just in time to save him. He wakes up sweating, breathing hard...and hard enough to make a thirteen year old boy blush. Unable to shake the uneasy feeling his nightmare brought on he goes to get firewood. When he gets back Jim and Spock are both up and an awkward silence settles in as they set up the fire.

They go like that for ten minutes before it all falls apart.

McCoy finally cracks and tells them that they don’t have to wreck what they have for him.

Spock tells Jim he shouldn’t feel guilty if he feels he needs someone else.

Jim asks both of them what on Earth they’re talking about, before randomly asking Spock if he had a half-brother.

Then they finally start talking.

“I don’t know when it started...maybe it’s always been there, but it’s all right,” McCoy looks up at them, glaring. “Really it is I don’t want either of you doing something out of some sense of nobility or pity.”

“You proceed from a false assumption, Leonard,” Spock says, cautiously putting one hand on McCoy’s knee.

“Do I?”

“Yes, Bones, you assume that your feelings are unrequited.”

“Even if they aren’t you two aren’t supposed to act on them, that’s what being in a committed relationship means. I can’t ask you to change that! You two are perfect for each other!”

“You yourself have said that no one is perfect, Leonard.”

“I never say that,” McCoy says, looking away to stare at something interesting in a nearby tree.

“Life is change; is there such stigma against the idea of expanding a relationship?” Spock asked.

“There isn’t if that’s what everyone desires it,” McCoy admits.

“And you do desire it don’t you, Spock?” Jim asked.

Spock nods. “Because of my difficulties with the fal-tor-pan I was unsure whether it was acceptable to even discuss the topic, least it cause unnecessary distress. I had been unsure that you might even want such a thing yourself, Jim, until recently.”

Jim grins sheepishly “Nothing gets by you, Spock. I’m sorry, I should have told you both earlier, but I guess like you, Bones, I thought I could just shove it away, pretend it wasn’t there, and carry on. I felt selfish that after beating all the odds to get you back, Spock, that I didn’t have the right to want anything else…anyone else.”

He moves over to McCoy, and takes his hand.

“But I do, Bones, I want you.”

Spock moves to his other side

“We want you.”

The next thing McCoy knows Jim is burying his face against his shoulder as Spock let’s his face be buried in McCoy’s hair. McCoy wraps his arms around them in tearful acceptance.

The hug is broken by the smell of burning eggs.

Once breakfast has been salvaged Jim starts making plans to get a bigger bed and Spock and McCoy discuss the best possible arrangements to add McCoy's collection of antiques to theirs.

The End


End file.
